Matthew and Philippe, Cool. No need to rush. Most likely this would take a minimum of 6 months before the first proto existed... While I agree with Jussi's comment that prototypes are expensive I still think this would be an interesting product to work on. Possibly, if we get a design together and make a couple of prototypes that work, and presuming there is enough of a market for it, maybe we can attract some contract manufacturer here in Silicon Valley or elsewhere to build it for us at lower cost. We might also license the design to a more well known company and let them make and sell this unit as an entry into the Linux world. As with most things where this might lead is unknown. What we have here are a lot of smart people who have an interest in *something* that we haven't exactly defined yet. I suggest that we try to take a poll on what sort of unit would be of the most interest to people. Some thoughts of mine, unprioritized and not representing what I want or need: Interface to PC - 1394, USB, private Ethernet? Inputs - 2-xxx - analog - analog + mic preamp (direct or transformer coupled?) - spdif - 1-x - ADAT - word clock Ouputs - main analog out (with volume control) - 1-xxx headphone outputs (with volume control?) - spdif - 1-x - ADAT - 1-x - word clock Send/Returns - use normal ins and outs or something special? Sync - ability to sync to one of the inputs, word clock or internal crystal MIDI? There must be no limitation on using multiple boxes on the same 1394/USB bus. We should consider multiple PCs using different boxes (or even the same box in some limited way) on the same 1394/USB bus. 61883? MLAN? For me, augmenting the features in the DigiDesign 002R unit (1394 interface, 1 spdif, 1 ADAT, 8 analog I/O with 4 mic preamps, 48V condenser power, 1 headphone, up to 96KHz) would be an interesting place to begin discussion. Alternatively we could do something much smaller too and think about multiple units to get the I/O count up. That's enough to chew on, I think... - Mark On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 18:43:30 +0000, dubphil(a)free.fr <dubphil(a)free.fr> wrote: